Feelings of panic after visiting Highgate Cemetery

[Therunecaster]

Good evening

I visited Highgate Cemetery last summer and the catacombs have played on my mind ever since. Normally I love a wander round a cemetery but on this occasion it has left me feeling anxious about death. I don't know if it was the catacombs or the mausoleums or just the wildness of it but I wish I hadn't gone. Has anyone else experienced this feeling?

Ooh, what an excellent story...were you all right?

@keepswimming38 shush! you are lowering the tone of this excellent thread 😂

I agree with previous posters on the discomfort and sadness when the dead person’s dignity and privacy are compromised. They are dead - it doesn’t “matter” to them but I think as a species it matters to us, the living.

There was a really interesting documentary about very early cave burials and how honouring the dead is one of the things that is connected with consciousness and being human, essentially. I can’t remember what it was called though.

I've never been to Highgate cemetery but would love to go. It looks absolutely fascinating.

Yes, fine thank you! It was midsummer but it still closed at 5, so I had to get a nice chap who.looked like Father Christmas to let me out. I'd been distracted by a poorly fox in there, and calling various wild animal charities for advice (she was fine and already being cared for by a wonderful local charity). Just as I was leaving, a big branch fell from a tree and broke a headstone.
It was a surreal afternoon, all in all..

How old are you, OP? Perhaps you've been confronted by your own mortality for the first time.

I've never been bothered about Highgate Cemetery, I now feel I need to make a visit!

Burst out laughing at @keepswimming38 🤣

And thank you for the book tip @emeraldroulette ordered it!

i have a list of places in the UK that I want to visit...just random places, like a lavender field or an animal sanctuary...ive also added Highgate cemetery and the Alnwick Gardens to that list. ☠️ DH said he's starting to worry about me...🤣

Malcom McLaren’s grave is in the East side, and yes, that is his death mask.

You are clearly sensitive to things other worldly. Put it behind you. You could visit a spiritualist for assurance.

I’m totally with you about Avebury. I was just thinking the same reading this.

There are clearly places that must touch us - good or bad - that we can’t get away from afterwards. I feel chills every time I picture Avebury.

That's fascinating anyway, but googling tells me they were the grandparents of the mid century children's writer Violet Needham.

Thank you.

Atmospheres in burial places - oh yes. Usually peaceful, full of memories and prayers, but sometimes, unexpectedly, there is something else.

Its properly creepy. I used to live nearby and would often go there. Its very much Victorian death cult, well over the top.
We're all going to die. That much is inevitable.
Im just having a pure cremation and then be scattered by the sea. No fancy tombs for me. Those places just encourage fanciful thinking.

aka creative and imaginative thinking. Not bad in and of itself.

Thanks for all the interesting posts. A lot of the comments make good sense to me. I think Highgate reminds me that death is inevitable and that all the people interned there were once alive just like me. I was 50 soon after we visited so as a poster said probably confronting my own mortality.

I was with a friend. We wandered around, tried every gate. Tried to call a number we found for a caretaker.
In the end we climbed out.
It was dusk, getting really spooky!

I might be weird, but I love walking around cemeteries. I just find them quite soothing and cathartic. It sends you to a place in your head of peace and comfort, but I think you have to be in the right mindset whilst there as it can send you spiralling into depressive thoughts. I’ve been to Highgate when I lived in London many years ago, but would never have visited alone in certain parts.

@Citrusbergamia I live near Alnwick Gardens it's amazing. You'd be welcome to stop the night if you've far to travel.

You would have to pay me a LOT of money to visit any catacombs. I can’t even watch scary films so this would probably unhinge me.

I want to get to the stage of being at peace with dying. It must really help as you age. I’m in my 50s and think more about death now, and sometimes it sends me into a panic. The thought of just disappearing and an infinity of not existing scares me. I want to embrace that dying is part of living, and to feel accepting and calm about it.

I have had such a creepy feeling every time I have been to Berlin because of all the Third Reich history. I haven’t had it in graveyards but places that remind me of extreme human cruelty are just far too depressing.

I understand how certain places can make you feel this way. As a teenager (13-15) my mother regularly forced me to go to the cemetery with her and read the headstones in the baby garden. It would distress me massively every time (she was emotionally abusive) I wasn’t allowed out alone but at 15 realised I could refuse to go anymore as it made me so unhappy.

That is a properly creepy book….

It was about 40 years ago that I visited Highgate Cemetery with my mother and brother, both now gone. I remember too the Julius Beer Mausoleum. What I took away from it was how important busy and powerful this man must have been, how many others he must have trodden on, but in the end his big important grave is just a curiosity and visitors say "who.?" Like another PP I find it gives perspective on the strivings of this life, so many of which turn out to be pointless.

I visited with my DD when she was having cancer treatment in London - she wanted to visit. She said she found it very calming and beautiful. I agree i found it a calming place.

DH who had an odd sense of humour took a photo of her and put a comedy ghost picture on her shoulder - she found it funny - she shares his sense of humour!

Another cemetery explorer here.
My great grandfather used to be a grave digger in Kensal Green. I've got relatives buried there and it's sobering to think he may have dug the graves for his wife and three young children who died within a month of each other.